What I'm trying to say is that I don't think it is possible to just take the Swiss model and transplant it elsewhere. It requires a multi-generational cultural conditioning to develop the civic mind that the Swiss have nurtured. It is also not clear how scalable it is ultimately.
It requires a certain amount of enlightenment without which the system would not work.
Not that it's universally adhered to by all proponents, but generally that's very much the understanding how the system should work.
As a for example: Switzerland has a "president". But that doesn't really matter since that changes annually and another member of the federal council gets to be president.
Except representative the "president" is not more powerful than any other member of the council.
One of the hall marks of the Swiss system is to push as much power as possible to as locally as possible.
Communities have a lot of power in their decision making as long as such decisions do not violate cantonal (state) or federal laws.
It demands, though, quite intense interaction with policies and referendums (there are usually about three referendums about various subjects on local, cantonal and federal level per year) and that said, I would wish that there would be more engagement and a higher ratio of voters actually going to the polls.
The smaller the group, the less hierarchy you need. I think that Switzerland is at the size limit of what direct democracy can support. In fact, it is not fully direct.
Wealth also helps. The richer you are, the more you can focus on your role in running the county and make informed decisions. That's because you have all your basic needs covered and don't really need to think about about your survival, leaving you open to higher level activities.
The classical example is Athenian democracy (the original). It worked because it involved only about 30000 people of the highest social class. Women and slaves didn't count.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_history_of_Switzerland
The old leagues and communes of Graubünden, which had some semblance of communal voting based democracy, was happening in the 1200's or earlier, long before Swiss wealth.
What it takes is a way different culture than the modern American mindset.
As a Swiss citizen, I think the feeling of individual power plays a minimal role. Unless you're some kind of political advocate you don't really wield any power and you do know that your single vote will almost never matter.
I think the big difference (and the real strength of a direct democracy) is the feeling you have that if a given system is in place, it is because a majority of the people - without discrimination - wanted it. Or, from the other side, that if a majority of people disliked it, they do have the power to change it.
It also requires ancient banking roots that enable it to sit on the largest 'pot of gold' in the world (1/3 of the entire world's foreign investment) and put the management surpluses into its treasury. And to add, much of that 'gold' was, and is, owned by some really, really bad people and stashed away in the mountains specifically because said keepers don't have qualms about the origins of said wealth.
Surplus money makes a lot of things a lot easier. (Much like the tone of a startup: flush with cash? It's all good times. Going out of business? Death marches!)
Switzerland for all its great things is a little like Lux, Norway, and Monaco, which is to say it's hard to separate their exceptionalism from their 'special status' of having huge piles of immense easy per capita wealth.
Also, to headline a post indicating 'national events shut down' which is an interesting but not particularly exceptional act, with the statement "We are the most X in the world, etc. etc." is slightly cringe-worthy. A lot of major events have been cancelled in a lot of places with similar risk exposures.
-has existed for much longer than Swiss banking being particularly significant
-existed already when Switzerland was one of the poorest countries in Europe
Also, banking is only significant in a small part of Switzerland.
It's really odd that someone would even bring that up.
Switzerland was the last country in the modern world to allow women to vote (1971) - and it was direct democracy that specifically blocked women from voting; a popular plebiscite in 1959 (obviously by men only) specifically prohibited women from enfranchisement. So much for popular progress? In Canada, women could vote in 1917. In Turkey, 1934. Finland, 1906. India, 1950.
The reason that Switzerland will be able to address the Coronavirus pandemic effectively will not be 'direct democracy', it will be wealth. Switzerland became wealthy largely due to a national economic strategy of banking secrecy, asset protection, and of course enabling evasion of taxation and other authorities. At almost 10% of the economy relative to assets under management, the banking sector in Switzerland is indeed substantially larger than other sectors relative to the sectors of other nations [1]. In the US it's 1%. Canada 2%.
Luxembourg, in the last 70-ish years, went from a backwater to even wealthier than Switzerland on a GDP/per-capita basis for similar reasons: it became a tax haven, a policy driven by no less than the outgoing EU Commission head JC Junker who was the PM of Lux. There is no real economy in Monaco, of course, but its high-income status is also derived from its special variation of tax haven. Even Irleand's massive economic renaissance in the last 20 years has largely been driven by asymmetrical tax benefits for large American tech corporations. And of course, Norway's sovereign wealth fund which owns 2% of all public stocks in the world is derived from another existential special economic bit: Oil.
When Corona hits, the 'rich' countries will be the safest (I think the US may possibly be an exception), and I think it will have little to do with their relative forms of government. Aside from their deep social ties to China, I think Singapore, for example, would be one of those ideal 'safe places'.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/267352/size-of-the-banki...
Swiss banks have indeed sat on funds where they could have been proactive in looking for heirs. They have traded and trade with companies and regimes that should be shunned. Switzerland is a tax haven and profits by taxing capital gains that could have been taxed where the work was done. Still there are many other factors that contribute to wealth. One thing is steady, low-corruption government and an investment mindset in public infrastructure. This coupled with a culture that fosters strong work ethics leads to accumulation of wealth. Another huge factor is no wars for centuries which is part luck, part ugly realpolitik.
So yes the Swiss system could not be implemented as-is by other countries. Yet looking at real-world implementations of certain policies can help illuminate how to get a wealthy population. And it doesn't have to be the tax thievery.
